Chapter 10: The Person of Jesus Christ
10
The Person of Jesus Christ
Who is Jesus Christ? And why is he so important for the Christian faith? The Christian doctrine of the person of Christ (“Christology”) sets out to explore why the little slice of human history called “Jesus of Nazareth” might hold the key to the nature of God and of human destiny. An excellent starting point for our reflections in this chapter is found in Pope John Paul II's (1920–2005) encyclical letter Faith and Reason (1998):
In the Incarnation of the Son of God we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis which the human mind of itself could not even have imagined: the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face. The truth communicated in Christ's Revelation is therefore no longer confined to a particular place or culture, but is offered to every man and woman who would welcome it as the word which is the absolutely valid source of meaning for human life.
The area of theology referred to as “Christology” sets out to locate Jesus of Nazareth on a conceptual map. It attempts to place him along the coordinates of time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality, and answer the question of how an event which took place at a specific time and place can be relevant for all people and all times.
The classical Christian account of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth is framed in terms of the concept of the “incarnation” and the doctrine of the “two natures” of Christ – divine and human. Jesus Christ is referred to as “God incarnate.” These ideas will probably seem strange to those new to the study of Christian theology. For this reason, it may be helpful to set the scene for the material presented in this chapter by sketching its themes, before going into them in more detail later.
As the church wrestled with the question of the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth, especially during the patristic period, it realized that it had to consider a wide range of models of interpretation. By the end of the fourth century, the church had made up its collective mind and decided that the only way of describing Jesus of Nazareth adequately was what has come to be known as the “two natures” formula – namely, that Jesus is “truly divine and truly human.” This is often referred to as the “Chalcedonian definition,” as it was fully set out by the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
This chapter sets out to explain the origins and development of this way of thinking about Jesus Christ, and how it has been understood, developed, and contextualized in the long history of Christian theology.